The subject matter described herein is related to biomedical nanotechnology combining multifunctional nanoparticles with biological materials such as proteins and cells.
Tiny nanocrystals, so called quantum dots, can be designed in size, shape and consistency to render a wide range of thermal and optical properties. The key to progress in nano-biotechnology is the confinement of electrons in a spatial region on the order of a few nanometers to a few tens of nanometers. When an electron is confined to such a small volume, its energy spectrum becomes discrete or at least close to that, while in bulk semiconductor material the energy is quasi-continuous. In order to exhibit the desired discreteness of the vibrational and excitation spectrum, the size of the confinement must be comparable to the Bohr radius of the quasi-bound entity, named exciton, of an electron and its hole. Controlling the size and shape of QDs allows the modeling and engineering of its optical properties in a wide range, e.g. the energies at which absorption and emission will preferentially occur.
Several human and/or animal diseases such as Alzheimer's, Huntingtons, Lou Gehrig's, Jakob-Kreutzfeld and Mad Cow disease are associated with protein misfolding, creating a plaque of abnormally shaped proteins, sticking together and destroying their proper three dimensional structure. These proteins form aggregates of insoluble gunk and in this process they may devastate the brain cells. Some of these proteins “prions” are infectious, causing mad cow disease and its human counterpart Jakob-Creutzfeld disease. For example, Alzheimer's disease affects the brain by destroying the neurons. Two distinctive characteristics of Alzheimer's disease are amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. Thus, amyloid plaques are abnormal aggregations of tissue that consists mainly of a protein called β-amyloid. These amyloid plaques from individuals with Alzheimer's disease show dominance of β-sheet structures indicated by the amide I and amide II band structures.